Helen Hunt had been working at Macy's in Newark for 27 years when the company shuttered its store on Market Street.
After a few weeks at home, Hunt said she was "bored to death" and looking for a new career when she stumbled on an ad in the newspaper for computer training classes at Newark Business Training Institute.
"I got in my car immediately and drove over there," she said. "I wanted to learn computers."
After about two weeks in the class, Hunt said, a man who had visited the class often sparked up a conversation with her. It turned out the frequent visitor was Stephen N. Adubato, the founder of the North Ward Center in Newark.
"He asked me what I had done prior to coming to class," Hunt said. "He said Macy's trained their people well. Then he asked me if I wanted to come work at the North Ward Center. I told him I didn't know what that was."
The chance meeting launched Hunt into her second career at the North Ward Center, where she spent the next 17 years in the fiscal office. She retires today.
"Helen has been a fixture at The North Ward Center," said Adrianne Davis, the Executive Director of The North Ward Center. "She is the kind of employee who will do anything to get the job done. She will certainly be missed around here."
Hunt, who grew up in Mecklenberg, N.C., first came up North in 1955 when her husband landed a job at a factory that made office furniture on McCarter Highway. The newlyweds first lived in an apartment on 148th Street and Lennox Ave in Manhattan. For someone raised in the rural South, Hunt said New York City was overwhelming.
"I was afraid of everything," she said. "I told my husband if we don't leave, I'm going back down south. I never saw so many people before."
The couple moved to Newark not long after, where they raised a family. Hunt has daughter, Marilyn, 54, who lives in North Carolina and a son, Charles, 50, who lives in Tennessee. She has four grandchildren.
In retirement, Hunt said she plans to volunteer in the hospital with sick babies two days a week, but she eventually plans to move to Raleigh, N.C., closer to her roots and her daughter.
